Is opposing gay marriage the same as being a racist?

Writing at The New Republic, Isaac Chotiner doesn’t much appreciate my argument about the growing cockiness of secular liberals. Where I see liberals arrogantly (and illiberally) pushing traditionalist religious believers into a corner with ObamaCare’s contraception mandate and anti-discrimination laws surrounding gay marriage, Chotiner sees…no problem at all. That’s exactly how I’d expect a committed secular liberal to respond. Which is why I wrote the column in the first place….

So let me try once more to convince him….

As for gay marriage and anti-discrimination, Chotiner appears not to recognize that his own flippant views — which are very widely held among secular liberals — pose a very real threat to the religious freedom of millions of his fellow citizens. As countless liberals have done before him, Chotiner breezily equates those believers who once appealed to scripture in defense of racism and those who currently reject gay marriage. The first position has been socially, morally, and legally marginalized with no negative consequences for faith, Chotiner asserts, and the same will soon be true about the second. So what’s the big deal?

The big deal is that strictures against homosexuality are rooted far more deeply in the Judeo-Christian tradition than racism ever was. Yes, slavery is found throughout the scriptures and comes in for criticism only, at best, by implication. But race-based slavery — and the racism that made it possible and continues to infect ideas and institutions throughout the West to this day — receives no explicit endorsement from the Bible.

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